Operation of high speed electronic components produces unwanted heat. For example, high speed computer processor elements such as microprocessors, graphics processors and the like generate unwanted heat that must be removed for efficient operation. Heat removal provides for a lower operating temperature, higher operating speeds and greater computing power. Additional advantages include higher reliability and availability.
To meet ever higher requirements for computing power, processor designs continue to evolve, becoming more complex and operating at ever higher speeds. More complex designs integrate greater and greater numbers of transistors, which each contribute to generation of more heat during operation. As each transistor is operated at higher speeds, heat generation is further increased.
Various cooling schemes are known in the prior art. In general, as cooling schemes become more efficient at removing heat, mechanisms to implement the schemes become larger, heavier, bulkier and more difficult to arrange in computer systems.
While high speed computer systems are blessed with tremendous computing power, they are also twice cursed: first they are cursed with the demanding cooling requirement of the high speed processors; and second they are cursed with even more demanding requirements for one or more specialized companion voltage regulators and high speed memories carefully arranged proximate to the high speed processors.
In some processor cooling schemes of the prior art, the bulky mechanisms for implementing the schemes interfere with advantageous arrangement and placement of the companion voltage regulator and memory for highest possible operating speed. For example, such bulky mechanisms have interfered when designers have pursued a substantially co-planar arrangement of the processor and voltage regulator extending across the surface of a motherboard. This problem is exacerbated by the introduction of additional bulky mechanisms for cooling the voltage regulator.
What is needed is an efficient and compact cooling method and apparatus arranged for simultaneously drawing heat from both a processor and from the voltage regulator, while still providing for advantageous arrangement of the voltage regulator and memory proximate to the processor for high speed operation.